fighting_mad | [AU] Milliways Bar

The bar's kinda quiet, today.

It's a change from a certain establishment on a backwater planet, anyway; for a moment, as the door opens, there's something of a general roar. Glass shattering, shouting, wood cracking as people are thrown into tables and chairs are broken over heads -- then the door shuts.

Plourr can taste blood in her mouth and her lip is starting to swell up; she's grinning wildly, though, as she weaves through empty tables to the bar, a tall, improbably muscled woman in boots, fitted trousers, a vest, and a tunic with the sleeves rolled up, a heavy blaster strapped to her right thigh. A small bundle of ice appears before she can say a word; she takes it, with only a light kick to the bar, and takes a seat on a stool. She presses the towel full of ice to her left hand's knuckles, which are ugly and split and smeared liberally with blood.

Not all of the blood on her knuckles, and none of it on her forearms, belongs to Lieutenant Ilo. (The rest of her is blood-free; she is good enough, by now, to avoid the worst of the sprays.) This is likely the cause behind her good humor.

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Well. That's a familiar goddamn sound.

Familiar and loud enough that Alex turns fast, boots dropping off the table, and her immediate thought is that some son of a bitch has started a ruckus in the middle of Milliways (and, hell, the mood she's in right now, she'd happily join in) -- but no, it's outside the door, and that same door cuts it off abruptly.

That woman's grin, though -- speak of familiar.

Alexandra Goncharova leans back in her chair, lets her eyebrows drift up with a wicked amusement, and drawls, "Whole room piss you off?"

"Nah," says Plourr, turning around, and her own eyebrows rise, just a little, at the sight of the other woman. "Just one or two of the people in it."

Beat.

"If they had a whole pack of equally thick-skulled friends, that wasn't my fault." It was her business, though, says her smirk.

Alex snorts.

It's not a particularly ladylike sound. In case anyone was wondering.

"You did 'em the kindness of pointing that out?"

Hell, it's only polite, right? Something like that.

"The part where they annoyed the hell of me, or the part where they were idiots? Either way," she spits blood into her hand, but no teeth, "the answer's 'you're damn right I did.' "

"Sometimes," Alexandra allows judiciously, "people need some goddamn critique."

"Builds character, right?"

Plourr's teeth are red when she grins; she swipes at them with the back of a hand.

"That and broken bones."

"Ahh, they'll heal up."

You make a living strapping yourself into a tank to get dropped out of a skyfurnace, you get cavalier about some of the occupational hazards.

Plus Alex has a shiny new set of marching orders back home, telling her it's time to trot off to get dropped out of a skyfurnace into an old familiar hellhole, and as such she wouldn't mind breaking a few heads herself.

"Hopefully not before they've learned not to try to take a lady's seat."

While she's still in it, but, semantics.

('Lady.' Ha.)

Alex tsks.

"Bastards. Didn't their mommies teach 'em anything?"

Goddamn orders. She really wouldn't mind a brawl.

This'll do for the moment.

Plourr leans against the bar, glancing down just long enough to shift the ice against her swelling hand. To her credit, she hardly winces.

"Personally, like I told 'em, I think their mothers were brainless no-account whores."

That was, possibly, when the first chair flew.

Alex lifts her glass, a languid sort of salute. Ice clinks, in the healthy dose of vodka; waters it down, goddamn stuff, but somehow Maya got her in the habit.

"Well, I can't see why they didn't take well to you after that."

"People don't appreciate honesty, these days," says Plourr.

It is very sad. Really. Heartbreaking.

"Don't appreciate getting their asses saved, either. It's a stupid galaxy out there."

"Guess you'd better keep on reminding them," Alexandra says, and knocks back a slug of vodka.

Beat.

"Galaxy?"

She's an old enough hand here that her tone curious, rather than startled. Still -- goddamn Milliways.

"Don't mind if I do," says Plourr.

"Yeah. Galaxy; thousands of planets, multiple systems, the Outer Rim, the Unknown Regions, that whole thing. Let me guess -- you're from Earth."

Sliding off the stool, she saunters in the other woman's direction, gesturing at the empty chair at her table. "You mind? The yelling's getting old."

"Born and raised."

"Got about fifty goddamn Earths around here, seems like, but who's counting?"

She shrugs, a loose-jointed and amiable roll of the shoulders, with another swallow of vodka. "Suit yourself."

"Not me," she says, dropping into the (sort of) offered chair with a (consciously) graceless thud. "They all sound the same to me. No blasters, no deep space travel, no fun."

A dark-eyed woman who's in pretty good shape, but who looks almost thin next to Plourr, walks over.

"Hey, Lieutenant," she smirks at the sight of Plourr's face, "Did you leave any of them alive?"

[Ah notifications, you are so fun.]

Lieutenant? Color Alex unsurprised. The other woman's bearing shouts military in every inch -- the kind of military that means front lines and pisshole bars, no tidy paper-pushing there -- and when you reach a certain rank, the brass gets extra-fussy about things like bar brawls. Lieutenants have a better shot at getting away with it, in Alex's experience.

So she just snorts again into her glass, and leaves that one to the (other) red-haired woman to answer.

Plourr rolls her eyes. "No killing, no getting maimed. I promised Wedge. Mirax Terrik, this is -- I didn't catch your name."

Mirax snorts in amusement and doesn't, quite, roll her eyes at Plourr. Her attention shifts politely to the other woman, waiting for an introduction.

"Alexandra Goncharova." Alex lifts her glass in lazy salute at a point halfway between the two women.

Her uniform and her bearing both shout military, even if you don't know Red Fleet insignias to read the captain's pips. But right now they're also shouting off-duty, thankyouverymuch, and she leaves off the rank for the moment.

"--Alexandra Goncharova," Plourr finishes the introduction, as if she hadn't had to ask for the other woman's name. "And I'm Plourr Ilo." This is to Alex, not to Mirax, who presumably knows her name by now. "And now we're all one big damn happy family."

Mirax snorts, "A bit violent family by the looks of it." Her grin widens, "With an innocent and peace-loving younger sister of course."

She means herself.

Happy family, huh.

Yeah, right.

"Charmed," Alex drawls, and she does, she thinks, like both of these women; at least insofar as it's possible to, after five minutes of acquaintance. Like hell is that going to stop her from letting the word roll out with lazy insouciance, though.

There's another seat for Mirax if she wants it. She'd probably do better not to wait for an explicit invitation, though.

[AU] Milliways Bar

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